Tag Archives: Namibia dubai

In just two months from now on, no cars that are more than 5 years old bought in Durban and or registered in Botswana would be allowed to enter Namibia. Why?

Here is the thing, and a very sad thing in my opinion. In Namibia, as the unemployment rate skyrockets past the 54% mark, some people have found a way to become self-employed, by buying and selling cars.

They go to Durban, buy cars in Durban, those generally from Dubai, and because there’s no interstate commerce relationship between South Africa and Namibia when coming to cars bought in Dubai, actually, let me retrieve a bit back.

When a car is imported from Dubai to Durban, it would have a registration plate for Dubai. When a buyer buys the car in Durban (Durban has the largest harbor in Africa), the buyer is not allowed to register it in Durban. So, in order to bring the car to Namibia, the car must be a SADC registered, hence they come to Botswana and register the car there. They pay over N$6,000 to register the car in Botswana.

Once the car is registered in Botswana, it would be a SADC registered, hence it’s allowed to enter Namibia. When it enters Namibia, the owner is only required to pay about N$500 to register the car for whatever town the owner is from in Namibia.

For all the years, Namibia has been losing out of millions of dollars in registration fees for cars from Dubai, while Botswana has been reaping all the financial benefits (no wonder Botswana has more than US$7 billion of cash reserve). If Namibia had allowed Dubai imported cars to be registered in Namibia, all that money would have been allowed to come and or stay in Namibia.

For those who have been buying cars in Durban and resell them in Namibia, have been those who have been looking to make a decent living since they may not have had jobs in Namibia. And those who buy them, are perhaps those who would otherwise not have been able to afford buying cars through traditional bank financing or cash, due to the fact that they may be the low paid wage Namibians. Hence they could only afford to buy these import cars from Dubai.

But in two months time, from today, June 6, 2011, Namibia will perhaps no longer allow imported cars to enter Namibia via Botswana that are perhaps more than 5 years old. And this will cut right directly into the money making scheme of the unemployed Namibians who have been living off of this little venture of buying and selling cars from Dubai.

There’s a saying that Dubai has been dumping these old cars in Africa, because perhaps in Dubai, cars that are more than 5 years old are not allowed to be driven there, and because of that they have been dumping them in Africa.

But why won’t the government of Namibia allow the buying and importing of these cars if the cars are road worthy? Why are they putting these people out of business and send them back to the unemployment line? These people have found a way how they can legally feed their families but then their ventures would be stopped and eliminated?